Opening - 3 December, 1 PM
Museum ASP, Traugutta 21
Closing - 8 January 2016
Making art has always helped me to formulate thoughts on matters troubling me and to which I cannot find easy answers. Immigration seen from the point of view of an immigrant takes on another perspective. We, who left our countries of origin, are particularly sensitive to the issues concerning our environment because we are forever looking for stability and solid ground beneath our feet. Yet, it happens over and over again that people prefer not to deal with global problems unless they perceive them as immediate threats. We cannot however deny that we have not been warned.
1.Scientists voiced their first suspicion about the "green house" effect on our planet already in the early 19th century . It didn't take long before they started to advocate the control of carbon dioxide emissions Needless to say, their appeals were not taken seriously until now when climate change can no longer be ignored.
2. Fears about population explosion began to be expressed in the 50s and 60s and the debates on this issue brought attention to the number of environmental problems it would inevitably cause.
3.The consequences of financial speculation were anticipated long before the international market collapsed in 1991 and 2008 but again, were not taken seriously.
We have been warned about water shortage, the pollution which is poisoning and destroying our planet, desertification, possible nuclear disasters and more.
The present epochal migration alarms western society which finds it difficult to admit that it is a consequence of the international policies of our governments, if not directly then certainly through consensus. We stood by and watched when the "cowboy" policies of George Bush and Tony Blair destroyed Iraq, when our arms industries sold, and continue to sell, weapons to whoever wishes to buy them. We observe when nothing much is being done to stop the conflicts in the Middle East, imagining that all this has nothing to do with us seeing as we live so far from these tragedies.
We find it difficult to admit that just about every European country was involved in mass immigration caused by wars and post war depressions. Most of us, in one way or another are immigrants or sons and daughters of immigrants whose courageous and often desperate, unwanted emigration helped those who stayed behind to survive.
Migration is inevitable, it is human, it can only be stopped by prevention and by peaceful, wise governing. It is up to us, the majority, to demand, by democratic means, that this should be achieved.
Sonia Rolak
